-Transcript-
00:35 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the cafe today.
00:40 What a beautiful day it is today. We’re so thankful to have you listening. Today we are talking about the Christian walk.
00:47 The Christian walk. How’s your Christian walk been? If you’re a Christian, you’re walking, right? Not physically sometimes, but you are traveling on a journey as a non-Christian, then maybe you would be interested in the Christian walk. It’s not easy, is it? It’s not what most people think it is, is it? You know, the Christian walk is challenging and you see saints of God, older saints of God, and they’ll tell you there have been many challenges and sometimes I’ll be troubled because I’ll look at them and they’ll be telling me, oh there’s a lot of challenges and I’m serving the Lord here and there, but it’s worth it.
01:37 But then they’ll be burdened down currently with a challenge. So it’s not just that there was challenges and they overcame them all and everything’s great, but those challenges still exist. Yet God is so good and we realize that we’re only on this earth for a season and that God is going to help us through His strength and power get through it by the working of the Holy Spirit within us.
01:59 We will complete this Christian walk if we’ve been saved, and those that haven’t been saved, it is the greatest walk that you can do. It’s the greatest calling that you can have on your life to serve the Lord. But we’re gonna clarify a little bit about what it means to walk the Christian walk from salvation to heaven so we can fully understand it.
02:16 Our text verse here is 2 Corinthians 5:7. For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7. For we walkby faith, not by sight. Well if we can’t see, right, if we’re walking by faith, if we can’t see and we’re moving forward, then we have to have faith that the one leading us is leading us in the right direction.
02:40 It’s important to know what to believe, how to act as we go across this Christian pathway that we’re on as we travel. And we do walk by faith, not by sight. I’m a visual person, Amen.
02:57 I like a good map, you know, maybe on Google Maps or even a paper map or a picture of a Bible map. I enjoy looking at where things are relationally to where other things are and so forth, and it’d be great if we had a map that the Lord just mailed us a map or just dropped it in our lap and said, here you go, here’s your Christian path from A to Z, this is what you’re gonna do, and here’s how you’re gonna travel. But we don’t have that.
03:23 What we do have is the Bible, Amen. And the Bible, by the way, a lot of Bibles have maps in them and they’re great to study those maps, but the Bible actually maps out the Christian walk, the Christian journey pretty good. And it all starts with salvation.
03:37 You know, when we are saved, we’re born again. The first step to understanding where we are today and where we’re going tomorrow is to look back on what happens when salvation occurs, because that is a life-changing experience. That is actually beyond life.
03:53 That’s a transformative experience when we are saved, when you’re saved, when I’m saved. When anyone is truly saved, they are literally born again. They get the Holy Spirit living within them, the Holy Spirit of promise, Amen.
04:08 They are sealed unto the day of redemption. Their name is written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life, never be blotted out, never to be erased. Christ’s righteous death on the cross is applied to their sin debt, and they no longer owe anything to God.
04:19 They’re not a debtor to God anymore because Christ died for them. They are now new in Christ, and so being saved is this transformative event that I look at, and this is just me the preacher speaking, but I look at it as the start of the Christian walk. Now, I’ve preached on this before.
04:36 I believe wholeheartedly, and I’ve seen this, that God will work in the hearts and minds of the lost to help them on their journey to becoming Christian, right? And there’s great conviction. I speak to my wife about that who had no Christian background whatsoever and found herself in the dollar store after high school looking for a little New Testament. Myself, I found myself sticking up and arguing for Christian principles before I’d ever been saved, and the question is, who put them there? Well, God put those convictions in us, and so we have a… the Bible says that all, everybody born physically has some light in them, so we have some light in us.
05:16 We have the Holy Spirit working on us. I believe God will send people to us and use people to help soften our hearts and so forth, and so we have all that going before being saved, but truly, to be a Christian, you must be saved, right? Christian means Christ-like, and to be Christ-like, you must accept Him as Lord and Savior. So salvation is where this all starts.
05:35 We are saved by God. Let’s make sure we understand this. Man does the planting of the seed and helping explain and so forth.
05:43 At the end of the day, God does the saving. Isaiah45:22, look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God andthere is none else. Jesus tells us it is God the Father that sent him for this purpose.
05:59 John 6:38-40, for I came down from heaven not to do mine own will,but the will of him that sent me. That’s John 6:38. Who sent Jesus? It’s God the Father.
06:08 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. So again, the Father’s will here is that everyone that God has given, because remember, we understand that God knew us before we were even born, Amen And he knew he’d be saved before it ever happened. All of those that God has given Jesus, none, he won’t lose a one.
06:36 We’re all saved for eternity. Verse 40, and this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life, and I will raisehim up at the last day. So John 6:40 tells us everyone that sees the Son, that’s capital S-O-N, everyone that sees Jesus, that sees him clearly as their Savior, understands their sin debt, accept Christ as Savior for paying that debt that’s called the substitutionary death.
07:01 Christ died for our sins. He was perfect and sinless, died for our sins. The Bible says without the shedding of blood there’s no remission of sin, and so Christ died for our sins.
07:11 We see our sin need. We see Christ as our Savior. We believe on Him and believe fully that He did what He, what the Bible says that He did, and we trust that God raised Him from the dead on the third day, Amen, and we trust that gospel message found in 1 Corinthians15:1- 4, and we are saved.
07:27 Then we are gloriously translated from death to life, John 5:24. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come intocondemnation, but has passed from death unto life. I love John 5:24 for a couple of reasons.
07:46 One, it outlines that we’re gonna have everlasting life, and two, it says that we’re not gonna come into condemnation, Amen. We’re not condemned anymore. Once we believe on Christ, we’re saved.
07:55 We’re spiritually dead when we’re born. We’re like the first Adam. You know what? The way I look at it is we’ve inherited sin from past generations.
08:04 The idea of it just being passed down all the way from Adam, that Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, and that sin entered the picture and has not left since, and it’s hereditary. Everybody that is born human has sin in them. I heard Les Feldick say this one time.
08:20 I love this, that we don’t sin because we’re bad people or something. We sin because we have a sin nature, and if you think about that, you understand that it’s bigger than like our attitudes or our behaviors. This is bigger than that.
08:33 This is our nature, and what’s given to us from Adam. That is the spiritually dead individual that is living today. When we’re saved, we go from that first Adam to the second Adam, or the first Adam to the last Adam.
08:40 When we’re saved, we’re born again. We’re made spiritually new. We’re taken from death to life.
08:49 We are given a new spirit. That’s when we get the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Bible says we must be born again.
08:56 Jesus says that, I believe, in the book of John to Nicodemus, and so we must be born again. The idea is we’re born physically once. Amen? Because remember, Nicodemus was asking, how can we go back into our mother’s womb? He didn’t understand it.
09:06 Spiritually, we’re still dead when we’re born once. We need to be born again and spiritually born to Christ and be a child of God through our salvation, and that is when the Christian walk begins. This is all done by and through Jesus Christ.
09:21 Why do we give Christ the glory? Why do we love Jesus Christ? Why do we talk about his great gift? Because it’s all done by and through Jesus Christ, Romans 6: 8-11. Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. If we be dead with Christ, we shall live with Him.
09:38 Think about that. Knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. Death hath no more dominion over him.
09:44 Amen. For in that he died, he died in the sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon or calculate ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
09:58 It wasn’t mean to reckon. It means to calculate. God wants us to think on these things.
10:02 He wants us to ponder these things. He wants us to understand that, look, this has been done for you, and in my word, I’ve explained to you my program. I’ve explained to you how to be saved, and what it means to be saved, and what the implications of salvation are.
10:18 Romans 6: 8 -11, tells us the idea, you see it in believers’ baptism, right? Someone gets saved, and by the way, when they get saved, they’re saved. Baptism is not going to save you, Amen Baptism is just a public profession of your faith. To be saved is something that you work out with fear and trembling in your heart.
10:35 That you really work out before God, that you understand, you reckon, you calculate, hey, I’m a sinner. I need a Savior. You realize your sin debt.
10:43 You go to God. You ask Him to save you, Amen You have that repentance about you where you no longer want to sin, Amen You want to be forgiven. You identify with God that that sin is bad, and that you can’t do it on your own.
10:56 You accept Christ as Savior, and the idea is like you’re being pushed under that water, dunked under that water. The Bible word or the theologian word would be immersed. You’re immersed under the water, and then fully, that’s like dying, Amen And then you’re raised from that water.
11:16 It’s like being raised again as Christ was raised again on the third day unto new life. And the old man has passed away. Behold, all things are new.
11:21 You are no longer who you used to be, Amen Anyone that has been saved, anyone that has gotten close to God, Amen? They know that they change dramatically. Matthew 7: 13- 14. Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.
11:37 And many there be which go there at, because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. I want you to understand to be saved is rare. If you’re saved, thank God, because it’s rare.
11:50 It’s very rare to be saved. The Bible here in Matthew 7:13-14 tells us that there’s a wide gate, that there’s a wide path, that there are many, many people going through a gate that leads to destruction. And you think of, sadly, a lot of the modern church, a lot of people are just out of church.
12:06 They’re headed to hell. They’re headed to destruction. Straight is the gate.
12:10 Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Thank God today in your prayer. If you haven’t already, thank Him for saving you.
12:18 Thank Him for being part of that rare minority. If you read the Bible, the Bible has a very, very strong theme of the minority, of the remnant, of the small group which God will save. And that’s us.
12:29 That’s those that truly believe on Christ as Savior. Not believing on Christ as Savior because someone told them to, or because it’s popular, or because they think that they can just check that box and keep living in sin, but truly believing on Christ as Savior in the sense that they’ve changed, Amen, and they have the Holy Spirit living within them. Those are the ones that I believe are truly saved.
12:48 So to recap, we’re born spiritually dead. We’re made alive by Christ Jesus. We are to reckon or calculate what that means for us each and every day to help us bring our focus back on Christ, and we should celebrate being in the very small minority that is saved.
13:03 It’s so rare. And this is the beginning of the Christian walk. If we spent every day, let’s say 20, 30 minutes, even an hour a day, focusing on our salvation and what it truly means, would we not be better Christians? Would we not walk that Christian walk just a little bit more spirited, a little bit more grateful, a little bit more informed? I believe we would.
13:25 How can we look to our present and our future if we aren’t really studying our past, really realizing the importance of salvation? The Lord put a burden on my heart this year to really preach about salvation in practically every message that I can because this is what he has done for us, and this is why life can be so glorious and victorious no matter what your circumstance is because you know your end, and it’s a peaceful expected end, and it’s all by God, through God, and all we have to do is believe and have faith, and we are justified by simply believing. Believe today. Be saved if you haven’t been.
14:03 It’s the greatest decision you’ll ever make. If you are saved, give God glory and thank him for this Christian walk. I appreciate you listening.
14:10 Take care. God bless and Amen.